Addresses:
Office
—Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28213.

Career

Professor of anthropology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte;
forensic anthropologist, Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de
Medecine Legale; forensic anthropologist, the State of North Carolina
Office of the Medical Examiner; taught classes at Quantico, Central
Identification Lab, and Canadian Police College; published first novel,
Deja Dead
, 1997; became subject of a dramatic television series based on life and
work,
Bones
, FOX, 2005.

Member:
American Academy of Forensic Sciences board.

Awards:
Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel for
Deja Dead
, 1997.

Sidelights

Kathleen J. Reichs is best known as the author of the series of mystery
novels featuring the character Temperance Brennan. Both the author and her
books are the inspiration for the
Bones
dramatic television series. She is also an anthropology professor,
forensic anthropologist, and acts as an expert witness at criminal trials.
Reichs uses the knowledge she gains from her primary work in anthropology
and forensic anthropology in her secondary career as a mystery writer. She
produces a new novel nearly every year.

Born in 1948 in Chicago, Illinois, Reichs attended Catholic schools with
her three sisters. Her father worked as a meatpacking company manager
while her mother was a homemaker who hosted her own book-club radio show.
While Reichs had the freedom to explore her interest in science and even
wrote her own book at the age of nine, she told Jennifer Jackson of the
Ottawa Citizen
, "It was a very traditional Roman Catholic upbringing. It
wasn't even a question of buying into it. I didn't know
anybody outside of my neighborhood." When she was 19 years old, she
married Paul Reichs, an attorney and captain in the Marine Corps.

Reichs studied anthropology at American University, then earned her Ph.D.
in skeletal biology and archaeology from Northwestern University while
raising her three children. While she initially planned on researching
Native American burials
and teaching, she became interested in forensic anthropology after being
asked to look into some cases by local authorities. Reichs eventually took
a position as a professor of this topic at the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte. Before becoming a novelist, Reichs published an
academic reference book on her specialty,
Forensic Osteology
, in 1986. (She later published a companion volume in 1997,
Forensic Osteology II: Advances in the Identification of Human Remains
.)

While an academic, Reichs first went to Montreal from 1989 to 1990 on an
academic exchange at McGill and Concordia universities. One of the reasons
she went there was to perfect her French. She became the only certified
French-speaking forensic anthropologist in North America. Reichs
eventually lived in Montreal on a part-time basis working as a forensic
anthropologist for the Quebec provincial police at the Montreal-based
Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale. As a forensic
anthropologist, she helped pathologists work on deceased bodies that were
either very decomposed or in skeletal form. Reichs assisted in
identification and helped determine how they died. She analyzed forensic
evidence such as bullet and stab wounds as well as fracture patterns.

Reichs was also employed in a similar capacity at the State of North
Carolina Office of the Medical Examiner. In this post, Reichs worked on up
to 80 cases per year. She also taught classes for FBI agents at Quantico,
Virginia, as well as the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii and Canadian
Police College in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Of her job, Reichs told Diane
Turbide of
Maclean's
, "What attracted me to this area of anthropology was the practical
aspect. People's lives are affected by what you do and
say—you can't be wrong." She later elaborated to
Cassandra Jardine of
Daily Telegraph
, "I found I could have an impact on lives; that's why I
moved across from archaeology. I work with the dead, but I am working for
the living. I cannot do anything for the victim of a murderer, but I can
help the next person who hopefully won't become a victim."

Around 1990, Reichs first began thinking of writing in a novel when a
colleague published a book and when she saw the success of Patricia
Cornwell's science-based mystery series about a pathologist.
Reichs's first effort did not gel, but she kept on believing she
should write a book. Beginning in about 1995, Reichs tried again. This
time she wrote a tight outline, timeline, and character sketches. She
produced what became her debut novel in about two years by writing a few
hours each morning and for several hours on the weekends. Through a friend
of friend of one of her daughters, Reichs' manuscript ended up with
a junior editor at Scribner. Impressed, the publisher offered her an
initial two-book deal with Scribner worth $1.7 million.

In 1997, Reichs published this first novel,
Deja Dead
, the beginning of the series featuring Temperance "Tempe"
Brennan. The story was inspired in part by the author's life and
several famous dismemberment cases Reichs worked on in Canada. Brennan is
a forensic anthropologist who left North Carolina and a problematic
marriage to work in Canada for the province of Quebec in the same
capacity. Working in Montreal, Brennan gets drawn into a murder
investigation after a decomposed woman's body is found by city
workers split up and bagged in a number of trash bags. While a local
police inspector, Luc Claudel, does not see the link between this death
and other murders in the area, Brennan digs deeper and eventually
convinces them that her theory is true.

In the novel, Reichs emphasizes accurate, technical descriptions of the
forensic procedures and is able to make this data accessible to laymen.
Deja Dead
was eventually published in 22 languages, was a best seller in the United
States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and sold more than a million
copies. It also won the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel and is
considered one of the best first crime novels ever.

Reichs was unsure about her new career as an author around the time that
Deja Dead
was published. In 2006, she told Gilbert Cruz of
Entertainment Weekly
, "I was uncomfortable writing my first book. I didn't talk
about it at all with my colleagues [at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte]. If you write fiction in a science department, you're a
bit suspect…. After the novel was published, my university was
supportive. They gave me a sabbatical—which I'm still on
nine years later."

Despite the novel's success, Reichs continued her forensic
anthropology work for Quebec and the state of North Carolina with about 40
and 30 cases a year respectively. But she did begin focusing more of her
attention on her writing career. Reichs published her much-anticipated
second novel,
Death du Jour
, in 1999. In this book, which is also set in Montreal, Brennan
investigates multiple deaths and murders including a nun who was nominated
for sainthood, an old woman at a farmhouse, and babies with their hearts
cut out. The cases were again inspired by two faith-related cases,
including the deaths of five member of the Solar Temple cult.
While
Deja Dead
had received generally positive, critics and readers were not as
impressed by its sequel. Still, Reichs signed a new deal with Scribner to
produce three new Brennan books in three years.

Reich's next title in the series came in 2000, with
Deadly Decisions
. In this book, Brennan deals with a visiting nephew while investigating a
number of murders related to a motorcycle gang war. Returning to North
Carolina for
Fatal Voyage
in 2001, Brennan investigates an airplane crash in the Great Smoky
Mountains in which 88 passengers have died. The plane was carrying a
sports team and its fans. During her investigation, she finds a body part
which does not match anyone on board and it leads her to an isolated
mountain cabin where bad things have happened. Because of the finding,
Brennan is fired from her post, but she continues to pursue the case
despite power brokers working against her.

As Reichs' Brennan series progressed, the author developed her
methodology for writing the books. She told the Montreal
Gazette
's Charlie Fidelman, "I start with a case I've worked
on and then I change all the details, names, places, and dates."
One book that was a prime example of this method was 2002's
Grave Secrets
which was based on an international case she worked on in 1982. At that
time, she excavated a mass grave in Guatemala which contained 23 bodies.
The victims were primarily women and children who were murdered by
military personnel.

Continuing the series always posed new challenges for Reichs. Talking to
Adam Dunn of
Publishers Weekly
before 2003's
Bare Bones
was published, Reichs admitted, "Well, there are certain things
you have to repeat, for people who are picking up this book first, but you
don't want to rehash. So there are certain details to repeat, but
in new ways, and that's one challenge. You also don't want
the story to repeat." She also tried to bring in different
perspectives and sciences in each book.

Inspired by another true story she heard, Reichs has Brennan look into how
the skeletal remains of three teenage girls made their way into the
basement of a pizzeria in Montreal in 2004's offering,
Monday Mourning
. Praising the book, Fidelman of the
Gazette
wrote, "Reich's writing is only getting better. Dialogue
flows more naturally and shows wit." In 2005's
Cross Bones
, Reichs adds a historical touch to the novel when she has Brennan be part
of the autopsy—and then investigation—of the murder of a
Hasidic Jew who was found in a warehouse, the victim of a gunshot wound. A
stranger sends Brennan looking for clues from biblical times in order to
solve the man's death. She must examine a skeleton from a man who
died in the siege of Massada as well as an Israeli family tomb over the
course of her investigation. Like many of Reichs' previous books,
Cross Bones
was a best seller; it was translated into 30 languages.

While Reichs continued her two careers, a television series was created
based both on her novels in a general sense as well as her real-life work
in forensic anthropology. Entitled
Bones
, the series debuted in 2005 on FOX and starred Emily Deschanel as
Brennan; Reichs served as a consultant on the show. Like Reichs, this
Brennan was both a forensic anthropologist and an author who wrote mystery
novels, though she is in her thirties, a bit younger than her literary
equivalent. The twist comes in that this Brennan writes novels centered
around a character named Kathy Reichs. The author Reichs appreciated the
series and the twists. She told Carol Memmott of
USA Today
, "We hope my readers will get a kick out of that and realize that
it's another manifestation of Tempe, and they are in on this inside
joke." The show was a hit in both the United States and the United
Kingdom.

As
Bones
aired on television, Reichs continued to do her forensic anthropology
work and write, including 2006's
Break No Bones
, which focuses on the human organ trade. She admitted her dual careers
were sometimes difficult for her to handle. Talking to Val Ross of the
Globe and Mail
, Reichs said "Some days, I do not want to write. Then again, some
days it's hard to go into the lab. You do what you have to
do."

User Contributions:

I am an enormous fan of Kathy Reichs and the show BONES. I love her story line and her intracy for anotomy and physiology being a nurse of over 34 years and becoming a Legal Nurse Consultant and Paralegal later, I enjoy watching the relationship between medicine and the law. It is a difficult combination and hard to blend. I love her work and live in Rock Hill, SC about 30 minutes from Charlotte.NC. I would love to meet her someday being so close and have a desire to be an Medical Examiner with all my years of experience but have ,I fear past the mark of acceptability into the field at my age. Age does matter. Kathy, I love your work it is detailed and on target anotomically and phyisiologically. Those are the details medical people look for is "mistakes" ,ha, yes we spellcheck your show to see how accurate it is and it is always unfailing in its accuracy and the way she brings it all together . I especially love the bug man. Hodgins and all the characters are so necessary and have such a perfect fit of all the characters is impeccable. love the show keep up the good work.

I am a retired English teacher living in Wilmington, NC, fascinated with Kathy Reichs' convoluted plots and delightful character portrayals. Given that her writing career features a character who mimics another career, I'm wondering if she ever has time to sit on the porch and spit cherry pits over the railing.

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